Tiff at the top; As Tiffany she came to a sticky end, but Martine McCutcheon's singing career is just beginning.
NOT so long ago she was the nation's favourite barmaid, before battling her way out of a nail- biting on-screen coma.Tragically for Martine McCutcheon's soap character it was all in vain as EastEnders' producers axed Tiffany from the soap by getting Frank Butcher to mow her down in his motor.
Now Martine thinks the BBC chiefs did her a big favour.
The move left her free to sign a pounds 1million deal with Innocent Records, the Virgin label which successfully launched Billie's pop career, and she looks set for a triumphant debut release next month.
Greeting Martine for breakfast in a luxurious suite in the Conrad Hotel, situated close to her Chelsea harbour home, the first thing I notice is just how stunning and slimmed- down shelooks these days. Gone are the leopardskin boob tubes and street- fashions with which she brightened up the Queen Vic four days a week.
Like Geri Halliwell, who jettisoned her Spice Girl sequinned hot-pants in favour of a softer, classic image when she embarked on a solo pop career, Martine's real-life style seems to have been inspired by screen idol Audrey Hepburn. Dressed in black, right down to her high heels, she has more in common with Breakfast At Tiffany's than Grant and Tiffany.
The second thing which is obvious about Martine is that she has an ambitious streak as wide as the Thames.
Brought up on a council estate in Hackney, East London, she admits her working class roots have helped shape her work ethic.
She was just six weeks old when she got her first modelling assignment - for a Labour Party billboard.
Her electrician father, Thomas Hemmings, had walked out on the family shortly after she was born and it was left to her barmaid mum Jenny to try to make ends meet.
"Because my mum and I didn't have any money, I have always worked really hard to get the things that my friends had at school," Martine tells me, in lilting cockney. "A lot of them had very wealthy parents. I learned what nice things were, nice shoes, bags and jewellery. I saw it all but I couldn't have it because we didn't have any money."
By the time she was four years old, she had appeared in television adverts for Pears soap and Kool Aid.
Martine pestered her mum to send her to Italia Conti stage school. Though Jenny couldn't afford the pounds 1000 term fees, she wrote to a number of charities before securing a scholarship for her daughter.
Martine said: "I'd go out and do a commercial and the money I got paid gave me a taste for good things. I wanted fashionable sunglasses and clothes. I wanted to hang out with my friends and be their equal but I didn't have my mum or dad buying things forme. So I had to go out and work and I think that's where I got the bug."
When Martine was nine, Jenny married Glaswegian John McCutcheon, an industrial window cleaner, and Martine took his name.
Martine laughs: "I took John's name which is Scottish but my family are Irish and Italians. They come from Rome, though which part of Italy depends how many Baileys my mum has had."
Her first single, a sweeping big Streisand-esque ballad called Perfect Moment, hits the shops on April 5. The classy song is already being tipped to go to No 1.
But Martine doesn't want to be lumped in with soap stars who simply cash in on their TV appeal for a quick raid on the charts.
She joined a girl trio called Milan when she was 16 and has already paid her dues.
"I've always wanted to sing," she says, convincingly. "But when I was in Milan everything was at the low end of the budget. We played the worst run- down clubs. Nobody was really serious about us. When things went wrong with Milan, I started working in Knickerbox and thought, this isn't what I planned.
"I tried to get a solo deal but nobody wanted to know. I was just another girl with big ambitions and a big voice. I learned what it was like to be a nobody and to be struggling and trying to make it.
"I'm treated like a princess now compared to the way I was treated then. But I'll never forget how they treated me."
Six months after Milan flopped, Martine turned up for an audition at EastEnders.
She said: "I got the part and I remember thinking: `This is fantastic, this could be my stepping stone to a music career.' I knew actors like Nick Berry and Anita Dobson had done stuff and reckoned EastEnders could be my way in.
"Of course I didn't realise how massive the character was going to be, just how fantastic and well-loved she was going to be. I stayed double the amount of time I wanted to. I ended up there for four years.
"During that time I was always singing on set. I would tell people I really want to sing."
All the same, Martine took it personally when soap bosses killed off Britain's favourite barmaid.
The 22-year-old actress had sought a couple of months off to pursue her recording career. She pleaded with the EastEnders' producers to leave the door open for her character's return.
Martine said: "What I wanted to do was come back, no matter what happened. To come back, walk into the Vic and say, `Hello Grant'.
"I told them that even if I had a number one single I would sign a contract to say I'd turn up in the Vic one last time because people would love it. I knew the BBC producers had given time off to other cast members. I thought they might do the same for me. But they wouldn't budge.
"They just said: `No - you either stay with it as it is or we're going to kill you off'. I said: `Don't you think that's a little drastic? We've got the best writers in Britain. There are loads of wonderful, dramatic things we can do. It doesn't mean you have to kill her off forever. That leaves no hope for me, for the public as far as the character goes, and no hope for the show as far as Tiffany is concerned.'
"I didn't want their attitude hanging over my head if I wanted time off to have a baby in the future. I didn't want them saying to me that I either work to the bitter end of my pregnancy or they would kill my character off. I can't have that. I suppose, also, they knew I would make my singing career work and they wanted to get their pound of flesh from me before I went."
Martine is single at the moment, but has been linked with a variety of stars including Mick Hucknall, Michael Douglas and record producer Karl Gordon, who's now engaged to All Saint Shaznay Lewis.
But she always has her mum to keep her feet firmly on the ground.
Martine explained: "When I won Best Actress at the National Television awards last October I had my big Scarlett O'Hara- style dress on and I went back to my flat with my mum.
She told me to get my pink marigolds on to do the washing-up. Next thing, we were standing there in our evening gowns bent over the sink with our rubber gloves on. It was hilarious. Every now and then I ask myself if I'm being big- headed. It's fine because I've got my family to keep my feet on the ground. Also I work really hard. I'm constantly striving for the next thing which keeps my modesty and my wits intact."
While Martine plans to spend the rest of the year establishing herself in the pop world, there are no plans to give up acting. And she has already decided on her leading man for her screen comeback - Ewan McGregor.
"I will definitely do an acting project next year," insists Martine. "I would love to have acted in a James Bond film with Sean Connery when he was younger.
"But I'd most like to act with Ewan McGregor. He wraps himself one hundred per cent into his roles. Ewan is a really attractive guy but he's not frightened to look rough or geeky. And I never cared about looking terrible as Tiffany. I had bags under my eyes, was seen in a coma, snot hanging down my nose, everything. I did it all for the love of my art.
"Maybe we could become a great British couple. He likes a nude scene though
"I wonder how I'd cope with that?"
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| Title Annotation: | Features |
|---|---|
| Author: | Dingwall, John |
| Publication: | Daily Record (Glasgow, Scotland) |
| Date: | Mar 27, 1999 |
| Words: | 1453 |
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